MEGATHREAD Flexible Fulfillment

SurefireWolf said:
Boy, do I ever! Here's a thread I made almost a year ago:
www.thebreakroom.org

Archived - Demoted due to impossible SFS standards

Before anyone says I'm being dramatic in using the word impossible, SFS at my store is expected to have less than 1% INF and pull SPU batches in under 5 minutes. This is sort of a long story, so I'm going to start from the beginning. My store has been doing SFS since the summer of 2015, and I...
www.thebreakroom.org www.thebreakroom.org

I don't want to bump it, but this seems like a good time for me to do a follow-up. I'll change everyone's name for this, and pick random names starting at the first of the alphabet.
The girl who I mentioned near the end of that post that I'll call Andrea, around the time I got kicked off, was being scheduled mostly for SFS, but sometimes for BR or reverse logistics shifts. And if you saw her in the break room, it was very obvious what workcenter she was on for the day. If she was happy and talkative, she was BR or rev-logistics. If she was at the table in the corner not wanting to talk, she was SFS. Management wasn't happy with her numbers, so they started putting Ben there. Andrea was also incredibly good at SFS.
Ben is a good worker, but, surprisingly enough, couldn't pull off that <1% INF score, so he started getting scheduled there less and less. Then Charlie got put in. In mid October, Charlie told management point blank that he never wanted to work SFS again due to the GSTL constantly getting on his case about "missed goal times on grey orders". Because a grey line next to the name in myGo means we missed the goal time. We tried as hard as we could, but couldn't convince the GS team that this wasn't the case. Around this time, our store hired Daryll. Since nobody was applying for the SFS position from the store, they had to open it up to the outside. So he came in, and after a month started getting mostly backroom shifts. These 4 were the only people working SFS, and generally only worked it twice a week because we still needed somebody to work there.

This is where it starts to get real funny. In early November we hired Erin as a seasonal SFS worker, as well as a slew of others. Erin got about 2 days of training from Charlie (who is not the most sociable of people) and she was on her own. Not only that, but after only being there a week or so, SHE was the one who had to train the new seasonal hires! We had a seasonal training seasonals. Admittedly, she was very good for someone who had only worked there for less than a fortnight.
During Christmas, only seasonals worked on SFS. The workload last year (2018) was only about 20% of what it was in 2017 when I was running it. It dropped because we got so far behind. In 2017 we made $1.3 million for the fiscal year, and in 2018 we only made ~$700,000 or so, mostly due to the lack of Christmas orders.

I don't blame the seasonal team one bit. As far as I know they all tried their best, but how good can you be a job with minimal training and a completely new worker running it? After Christmas, all but 2 of them were let go. Erin and Frank stayed. The biggest reason they stayed is because literally nobody else in the store wants the job. An older backroom woman, Ms. Trenchbull (I'm skipping a few letters here), told me that she laughed in the face of the ETL who asked her if she wanted to run SFS, and knowing her personality, I completely believe her. TLs feel like they've given up on SFS now. They never mention the metrics, and only badger the SFS worker whenever a SPU drops.

So to sum all this up: Our store used to be the best ranked in our district in terms of fulfillment percentage and sales. Management (minus the STL, who was on LoA) wanted better, so they kept kicking the best people off blaming them for all of the supposed "problems." When I eventually find a new job (40 applications, nothing still), I'm incredibly temped to gift them a children's book about the goose that laid the golden egg as a parting gift.
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Yep ours don't see it as income and sales, they see it as a waste of payroll cause all we do is walk around all day when we could be doing work. They also wouldn't have to hear us complain that INF is so high cause the backroom and salesfloor are fucking mess.
 
So is this supposed to be refrigerated?
 

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That Almondbreeze milk, and many others like it are not refrigerated. They are located (in our store) in the baking aisle. We ship a lot of it for SFS.
 
@mobilelady

Please, please pass along that the batching of SIO needs to be reexamined. 50 pound bags of dog food, tubs of cat litter, car seats, infant furniture, and other large, heavy, bulky items drop in our regular batches. While I realize that some of these do get shipped out boxed and not SIO, they really need to be in the SIO batches. As it is, it is sometimes difficult to fit 200 pounds of dog food with another 70 pounds of cat litter on my sfs cart. Not to mention all the wear on the carts (most of ours are partially broken now).

So please, we really need all large items to go into SIO batches, even if they arent technically SIO. Its so much easier to load these on a flat than cram them into an overflowing SFS cart.
 
slowhands said:
@mobilelady

Please, please pass along that the batching of SIO needs to be reexamined. 50 pound bags of dog food, tubs of cat litter, car seats, infant furniture, and other large, heavy, bulky items drop in our regular batches. While I realize that some of these do get shipped out boxed and not SIO, they really need to be in the SIO batches. As it is, it is sometimes difficult to fit 200 pounds of dog food with another 70 pounds of cat litter on my sfs cart. Not to mention all the wear on the carts (most of ours are partially broken now).

So please, we really need all large items to go into SIO batches, even if they arent technically SIO. Its so much easier to load these on a flat than cram them into an overflowing SFS cart.
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And then you jump into the SA batch and it's a bra
 
@mobilelady Just a couple of suggestions to make things a bit easier:

1) It would be really nice to have the item DPCI with a clickable link to MyWork for items located in the backroom before scanning the backroom location. That way I can do my research, figure out if the item I want is really in the listed location and move on quickly. When I have a large OPU going and have others waiting for me, it's really not the time to make backroom errors my problem.

2) For OPUs large items should be shown first. If the order includes something like a TV or bookcase, well, that's not going to fit in my three-tier. If I know at the start, then there is plenty of time to call another TM to bring out a flat and take the item to the front while I go about picking the rest of the order. But, if it doesn't pop up until after I've already picked a bunch of small items, then we're scrambling.

3) Choose your starting position would be great and then have pathing done accordingly. The app almost always starts with backroom locations. That's great....if I'm in the backroom. But, 75% of the time I start an OPU I'm at guest services having just finished putting the previous order in hold. When the store is busy, that means I have to start the pick by scrambling to the back and fight through guests (i.e., trying to dodge questions, pretend that I can't hear as I'm rushing past, waiting for the whales in electric carts blocking the racetrack to get out of my way, etc.) The option to chose to start at the front of the store and work my way to the back would be nice.
 
seasonaldude said:
@mobilelady Just a couple of suggestions to make things a bit easier:

1) It would be really nice to have the item DPCI with a clickable link to MyWork for items located in the backroom before scanning the backroom location. That way I can do my research, figure out if the item I want is really in the listed location and move on quickly. When I have a large OPU going and have others waiting for me, it's really not the time to make backroom errors my problem.

2) For OPUs large items should be shown first. If the order includes something like a TV or bookcase, well, that's not going to fit in my three-tier. If I know at the start, then there is plenty of time to call another TM to bring out a flat and take the item to the front while I go about picking the rest of the order. But, if it doesn't pop up until after I've already picked a bunch of small items, then we're scrambling.

3) Choose your starting position would be great and then have pathing done accordingly. The app almost always starts with backroom locations. That's great....if I'm in the backroom. But, 75% of the time I start an OPU I'm at guest services having just finished putting the previous order in hold. When the store is busy, that means I have to start the pick by scrambling to the back and fight through guests (i.e., trying to dodge questions, pretend that I can't hear as I'm rushing past, waiting for the whales in electric carts blocking the racetrack to get out of my way, etc.) The option to chose to start at the front of the store and work my way to the back would be nice.
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Why don’t you use the task list now that’s it’s back and skip tasks until you get on the task you want. I’m not complaining though, I’d love a pick your tasks and have the pathing ACCURATELY—keyword, follow it. But I use skip and myStore—thank you @Mikuhl location barcode to fake pull & rebackstock and just get it from the floor. I don’t have the time to go all the way to our main stockroom in my store layout to get one damn bottle of Clorox, it’s stupid.
 
RunForACallBox said:
Why don’t you use the task list now that’s it’s back and skip tasks until you get on the task you want
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Sometimes skipping items completely screws up the list. I skip through certain items knowing I'm nowhere near them and/or am better leaving them for last for various reasons. Which can cause ePick to start at the beginning of the task list after each item scanned.
 
hufflepuff said:
Sometimes skipping items completely screws up the list. I skip through certain items knowing I'm nowhere near them and/or am better leaving them for last for various reasons. Which can cause ePick to start at the beginning of the task list after each item scanned.
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That’s true, too. I try to be vigilant when I start skipping, haha.
 
hufflepuff said:
Sometimes skipping items completely screws up the list. I skip through certain items knowing I'm nowhere near them and/or am better leaving them for last for various reasons. Which can cause ePick to start at the beginning of the task list after each item scanned.
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If your skipping and grabbing items, don’t scan the item in ePick. Double check in MyWork or the tag label that the DPCI match, and once they do just put it in your cart. At the end of your batch, scan everything you found in ePick. It’s better than skip, scan, beginning of list and skip again.
 
JohnSith373 said:
If your skipping and grabbing items, don’t scan the item in ePick. Double check in MyWork or the tag label that the DPCI match, and once they do just put it in your cart. At the end of your batch, scan everything you found in ePick. It’s better than skip, scan, beginning of list and skip again.
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I’ve done that before when I was trying to find crap in Style. Keyword ‘trying’ 🙄
 
What I'd love is the ability to go to specific items on ePick instead of hitting skip a million times. Already, when you click on the task counter, it'll SHOW you where the locations are, but I wish they clicked through.

Edit: Should've refreshed the page again before posting 😄
 
RunForACallBox said:
I’m not complaining though, I’d love a pick your tasks and
Click to expand...

Tends not to work well for large, multitask picks. If I skip through all the backroom locations, the first salesfloor location I get is the one closest to the back. I can skip those and get to something near the front, but then after picking that it loops back around to the backroom locations. I constantly have to skip, skip, skip to get the path I want. That's not really realistic when I'm trying to speed through a pick and have other picks waiting for me.

My store doesn't have SFS so they refuse to schedule more than one person for flex at a time. When OPUs and drive-ups start dropping in waves, as they predictably do at the same times everyday, there's no time to waste trying to game the software. We just gotta run and hope that the next task around the bend doesn't cause us to smack against the brick wall that the store's fucked up floor counts and BRLA are.
 
Antennae said:
It'd be fucking cool if the mydevices didn't randomly log me out as I'm working so I'd be able to get the Flex alerts instead of missing goals.
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Always fun when you are nearing goal time, it logs you out and now you are locked out of that cart so you miss goal time..
 
Bosch said:
Sometimes but others its just locked up. It's really fun cause its usually my spare cart bar code.. The one I keep so the actual cart is an SFS batch but the OPU is the label stuck to my holster..
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It happened to me 3 times the same day ! Our pick time dropped to 35 % that day !
I call csc every time ! I tell the LOD HR too !
And I keep a notebook with time / cart / and the order number !
 
Does anyone know if pricing can use SFS boxes for salvage? I can’t find anything official but I could have sworn I was told they can’t by someone higher up. It is getting crazy the amount of boxes they are taking in my store.
 

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